New camera app features in Apple's iOS 8

We wrote yesterday about some of the imaging related changes that Apple announced with the latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 8, at its annual developers event WWDC. Now that users have had a day or so to play with the developers' beta version of iOS 8, a few more photo features have been discovered that were not mentioned in the keynote. Here's a quick summary:

Time-Lapse Mode

There is a good selection of time lapse apps available in the App Store but Apple has now apparently decided to integrate this feature into the standard camera app. Next to Video and Slo-Mo there is now also a Time-Lapse mode. By the looks of it, it's a fairly basic implementation, without much control over shooting and processing parameters. So if you're a time-lapse aficionado you might still be better off with one of the more complex dedicated apps.

Separate control of exposure and focus

Until now in the iPhone camera app the exposure had been locked to the focus point. In most shooting scenarios this works fine but occasionally, when you want or have to focus on very dark or bright area of the frame, you might end up with an over- or underexposed image. Some third-party camera apps and many Android phones have therefore been allowing separate control of exposure and focus for quite some time.

Now Apple has integrated some additional control over exposure into its own camera app as well. The focus point is selected as before, by tapping on the screen. However, you can now adjust exposure by sliding up or down.

Self-Timer

The self-timer does what it says and allows you to set a 3- or 10-second delay for the occasions when you want to be in the picture yourself. Now just make sure you carry a decent smartphone-tripod or other support with you, otherwise this new mode won't be of much use to you.

Instant Burst Mode

Very little detail has been surfaced about this new mode but we can only assume it is an improvement of the iPhone's current burst mode in some shape or form. It's possible that it could facilitate a version of the post-capture focusing features we've seen in other smartphones, too. We'll post an update once we know more.

iPad panorama mode

The last new photo feature is for iPad users only. In iOS 7 you could not take panoramic images on an iPad. This has now been rectified with iOS 8 and you can sweep your tablet around to capture the landscape that's surrounding you. Just make sure you don't hit any passerbys on the head by accident.

It also limits the maximal shutter speed to 1/1000s, while, as I've already explained earlier, iDevcies are generally capable of much higher shutter speeds; for example, the iPad3 to 1/37037s. (of course, I *really* don't think it's indeed that fast in practice, not even in full electronic shutter mode. Nevertheless, the default 1/1000s is a bit too limiting.) I'll also remove this restriction.

Finally, I'll add some nice blurred background to the titles so that they are always visible - as I've done in my manual app (see screenshot at http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=19207197&postcount=32 )

Note that, as is common with all third-party camera apps, it (obviously) has no access to the excellent (semi-)HDR and Sweep panorama mode of the stock Camera app. Apple REALLY should let app developers access those in their apps so that users don't need to switch between the stock Camera app and other apps whenever they want to shoot HDR and/or sweep pano shots.

Exposure compensation is also working GREAT! (See my dedicated, earlier, pre-iOS8 article at http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1621351 for more info.)

Both the iPad2 and 3 allow for +/-8 EV compensation, which is certainly VERY good news. (Let me point out again that in my above-linked Exposure Compensation and Bracketing Bible, I did point out phone cameras, except for the Nokia 808 with its, among phone cams, unique +/-4 EV comp., only generally allow for +/-2 EV.)

Both iDevices produced decent results. That is, both the shutter speed and the ISO was properly and automatically adjusted, resulting in non-noisy images (with + EV) / ones without burnt-in highlights (- EV) - which would be characteristic of faux exp. comp applied AFTER taking an image.

More info on modifying my earlier source code to allow for manual exp. comp at http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=19201202&postcount=30

The maximum shutter speeds are as follows (minimum being, as has already been explained, 1s): iPad3: 0.000027; iPad2: 0.000037s

Second, the bad news: it seems iDevices (at least the iPad 2 and 3 but I really don't think other, current models are better) are only capable of shutter speeds up to 1s but no more. This was easy to predict as only dedicated cameraphones (for example, the 1020 with its max. 4s shutter) are capable of taking longer shots. That is, don't expect easy and factory nightshots without frame averaging.

This takes a shot with the shutter speed of 1s (1/1 = 1) and the ISO 100.

As promised, I'll VERY soon come up with a Nokia Camera-alike. Before that, I'll surely release a shooter with four, static sliders to set the four parameters (manual focus, shutter speed, ISO and (combining the latter two parameters) exp. compensation).

BTW, what I *really* hate is Apple's making it purposefully impossible to develop

- for new SDK's under old(er) OS'es- for old SDK's under new(er) OS'es.

An example: I have two MBP's - a 17" one (my work horse) and a 13" one (which I rarely use because of the crappy screen resolution necessiating the use of an external monitor.) My 17" one runs on 10.8 because in my AppStore apps I still support armv6 (iPhone3G/iPod touch 2G) and Xcode 4.4.1, the last Xcode version to support compiling for armv6, doesn't even start under OS X 10.9.

Needless to say, OS X 10.9.4 is needed to run Xcode 6.0 beta required to compile for iOS8 and to access the new SDK.

The demise of paid photography continues. I cant believe all the positive posts to this story. No pro photographers I guess among the comments? How sad. Steve Job's legacy is that he created a product that is killing off pro photography. This will only accelerate the process. Now, even soccer moms wont bother hiring a pro photographer, thinking that because they can slide a few levers on their tiny phone screens, they are now photographers and may convince them self's that they don't even need someone for their daughters wedding. How sad. and what a joke. Paid photography RIP.

come on, you posted exactly the same thing on the Instagram story. If you're a professional photographer and really feel threatened by cellphones in the hands of soccer mums you should probably think about a change of profession anyway.

Indubitably! Huzzah to you, sir! I can certainly relate, having lost my job as a stage coach driver when these new-fangled horseless carriages arrived on the scene. And then my grandson lost his job as a mimeograph machine repairman when people no longer wanted purple copies of things.I say that if something was a job at one point in history, it should ALWAYS be a job, no matter how low the barriers to entry become. People should still pay for services they no longer need because they've always paid for them, even if they can get satisfactory results by themselves! Take, for instance, this very comment. I could have typed it into the computer myself, but instead it's been transcribed by my secretary from her shorthand notes from a recording I made into a dictaphone.

But seriously, "Steve Job's legacy is that he created a product that is killing off pro photography."?Ridiculous on at least three levels. 1- His legacy is a lot more than that2- He didn't create the smartphone or camera phones, and the iPhone certainly isn't the only phone out there taking good-to-great photos3-It's not killing pro photography, but it's weeding out a lot of bad and/or low-end pro-photographers.

Just because something is improving the way a certain action is accomplished, it doesn't mean that you can't still have a profession in that field. For example: Even with advanced tools like spell check and grammar check, there's still a high demand for good copy editors and people who can actually write well. Why? Because people still write things like "convince them self's that they don't even need someone for their daughters wedding."

After installing it on one of my iPad2's, I've just finished installing iOS8 beta1 on one of my iPad 3's too.

There's no panorama support at all, meaning at least the iPad 2 and 3 will NOT be able to shoot panos. Which is kinda a letdown, given that the iPhone 4S, based on the same CPU and an even higher-Mpixel sensor (meaning more data to process) is capable of doing so.

The Air and the rMini do support panos (confirmed), on the other hand. Dunno about the iPad4 / Mini 1.

Separate focus & exposure setting works great and is much more intuitive than the previous two-square approach used by all AppStore apps + CameraTweak. (They couldn't have invented anything similar to the new swipe up/down method, anyway, given that in previous iOS versions the only way of separately setting the exposure was pointing the square to a subject area, not by directly "dialing in" a positive / negative exp. bias.)

When Apple announce which devices will get which features then come back and talk to us. But until then don't make such factual statements on areas that are clearly likely to be in flux. You're sounding like you're new to this whole beta thing.

"Yeah because Beta 1 is always 100% feature complete across all supported devices."

I'm 99% sure the iPad2/3 in the final version won't receive pano either. Again, let me point out that the Air / rMini has flawless pano support NOW.

Again, Apple is known for not implementing new features on "old" but still perfectly capable hardware. The A5 CPU, especially paired with the low-resolution sensor (compared to the 8 Mpixel one in the iPhone 4S) would be more than able to stitch panos. Nevertheless, because of Apple's stance on supporting old models, these two iPads will NOT receive pano.

iPad 2's camera is a sub-1Mpix joke, pointless for anything beyond record-taking purposes. I don't understand why anyone who cares enough about photography to create a DPReview account would even think about using it.

iPad 3 actually has a camera with a fighting chance to take decent photos. However, as any iPad 3 owner can tell you, the CPU/GPU inside was never quite adequate to drive the retina display UI. (iPhone 4S has to drive a much smaller display.) I don't think the camera hardware is the same, either; contemporary reviews note that the iPad camera is clearly slower than iPhone's. So there may be good technical reasons why iPad 3 cannot do pano well enough for Apple to enable the feature.

"iPad 2's camera is a sub-1Mpix joke, pointless for anything beyond record-taking purposes. I don't understand why anyone who cares enough about photography to create a DPReview account would even think about using it."

Absolutely disagreed. The vast majority of third-party on-iDevice pano stitchers generally use vertical resolutions around 720 pixels, at least in their default ("fast", not "quality") mode. So did the previous Google Camera app's sweep pano mode. Or Nokia's one on Symbian. Or Microsoft's otherwise, stitching quality-wise, pretty good pano shooter (Photosynth) on all supported platforms (iOS, WP).

That is, being restricted to "only" shoot panos 720 pixels high (unless pano shooting in portrait mode is allowed for 1280 pixel high panos) isn't that big a problem.

Finally, the low IQ of the iPad2's camera wouldn't be that big a problem - after all, sweep panos aren't that high quality on any platform (not only mobile ones - see e.g. Sony's implementation), after all.

"However, as any iPad 3 owner can tell you, the CPU/GPU inside was never quite adequate to drive the retina display UI. (iPhone 4S has to drive a much smaller display.) I don't think the camera hardware is the same, either; contemporary reviews note that the iPad camera is clearly slower than iPhone's."

I'm afraid you're wrong. I've just benchmarked this on one of my iOS8-upgraded iPad3's: it's capable of 2.54 fps burst shooting under good light, which is only a bit short of the iPhone 5 with its 3 fps (sporting a faster A6 but also a significantly larger-res sensor) and is almost three times(!!!) faster than the iPhone 4. (Also see my other benchmarks at http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1698879 )

All in all, the sensor's readout time isn't the problem. Neither is the speed of the A5 CPU. Let me point out that it does NOT execute non-graphical stuff slower than the A5 in the iPhone 4S - and dynamic pano stitching would belong to this category.

If and only if they also increase the sensor size. But, as not even Apple can beat the laws of physics and they surely won't make a camera hump and/or a phone thicker than 7.5mm, it's highly unlikely we will ever see a significantly larger (larger than, say, 1/2.3") sensor in an iPhone.

That is, if they can't increase the sensor size, they'd be better sticking with a "low" resolution. They in no ways should go the Sony way with their, on the pixel level, absolutely awful 20 Mpixel sensors.

If you want to print an 8x10 image at 300dpi you only need 7.2 megapixels. So there is already space for cropping.

Next question: How many people still print 8x10 images?

In the reality of most people, the iPhone already gives them more megapixels than they will use 95% of the time. The iPhone already has twice as many megapixels as you need to fill a Retina MacBook Pro full screen!

For people who mostly post to social media, most of the current megapixels in an iPhone are dead weight that takes up valuable space on your phone and in your backups.

Well, we still won't have this in the stock Camera app. There, all we can do is moving the exposure rectangle to a dark / bright spot to over / underexpose the image. This is, of course, far-far inferior to the solution of all other mobile OS'es. Let me point out again that for example Android had exp. compensation even some 4-5 years ago.

Hopwever, it seems it's possible to provide proper (!!!) and not faux (unlike, for example, KitCam's faux exp. slider explained in section "4. What about KitCam?" in my Exposure Compensation and Bracketing Bible at http://www.iphonelife.com/blog/87/exposure-compensation-and-bracketing-bible ) exp. comp. via at least one of the new, iOS8+ methods I've listed below starting with "setExposure".

I'll soon report back on whether these methods can indeed be used for proper exp. comp., as under other mobile OS'es. If they can, then, third-party apps will be able to provide us exp. comp. - at last.

I've uploaded the file, AVCaptureDevice.h, which contains all the declarations of the for app developers available methods. In order to find the brand new, above methods, search for "8_0". (Without the quotes, obviously.)

The file is at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/81986513/062014/AVCaptureDevice.h

I'll continue providing you with more info and, before long, a FULL app (with sources) that makes it possible to use the new features. (Before you ask: yes, I've published several of such open source apps back in the iOS7 beta days, before the final release of the OS.)

I will very soon code an app that sets (via manual user interface-based controls) these values to see whether they're already working and how they behave on different iOS8-capable hardware (iPad2 and iPad3 for start).

One of the many things that makes the iPhone camera surprisingly useful. (It will be interesting to combine this with the self-timer.) Another is that the lens is at a corner, allowing – depending on phone orientation – very close proximity to objects. That makes for interesting compositions and more light on very close subjects.

(I’ve even taken advantage of the corner-mounted camera to peek under closed doors!)

well, I think it is a valid comparison because there is a bazillion of Android phones out there and if you buy a phone these days, just in terms of market share, it is usually between Android and iPhone. You are completely right though, the Nokia devices usually have very decent cameras.

iphone camera isn't any better than much of android crowd, you think too good about apple phone if you think it can compete with that nokias. There are also better android cameras, like xperia z1, etc. The only advantage I see on the iphone side is the shutter lag. On the other hand, android now has much better panorama engine (see google camera).

Look, I'm in no way an Apple fanboy, but this was ridiculous. The Z1's camera is REALLY bad and can't in any way match the 5s. Not even that of the Z2, for that matter.

" The only advantage I see on the iphone side is the shutter lag."

And the sweep pano. And, with the 5s, the burst speed.

" On the other hand, android now has much better panorama engine (see google camera)."

Sorry, but this is complete BS. I've very thoroughly tested the new pano feature of the Google app and found that, while it's much-much better than the sweep pano of the previous major version, it in no way can stitch frames as flawlessly as the iPhone.

Let me repeat: I'm NOT an Apple fanboy. I've had very heated debates with some people justifying Apple's anti-consumer decisions (e.g., 1GB of RAM in Retina iPads; cr@ppy Bluetooth implementation etc.) even at DPR's own iOS forum.

"Sorry, but this is complete BS. I've very thoroughly tested the new pano feature of the Google app and found that, while it's much-much better than the sweep pano of the previous major version, it in no way can stitch frames as flawlessly as the iPhone."I cannot imagine how crappy sweep can be better than android guided mode, which gives subtle control over composition. And, possibly you don't know yet, android recently released rectangular projection for 3x3 stitch: that is really amazing.In other words, iphone may be stitch better, but google camera is just a better app overall.

"I cannot imagine how crappy sweep can be better than android guided mode, which gives subtle control over composition."

Look, get a, say, iPhone 5 and a, say, N7 2013. Make some panos from exactly the same position. I *guarantee* the iPhone's pano will show much fewer (if any!) stitching errors. (Of course, WRT variable exposure, the Android app wins anything iPhone but the 5s. Nevertheless, almost all third-party, stitching-based iOS apps support variable exposure.)

Ouch, I knew this. Sorry dude, panoramas you have posted are a pure joke.Sweep mode is a toy to try it once and forget. Guided google camera's mode thanks to its subtle control gives much more room for creativity.I just don't get the point of shooting long wide belts. They are crappy. I'm using "belt" panoramas in the way like this:https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12196364/gallery/2014.05.10/2014-05-1210.06.43.jpghttps://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12196364/gallery/2014.05.10/2014-05-2316.15.45.jpg

"Ouch, I knew this. Sorry dude, panoramas you have posted are a pure joke."

1, they are all demonstrating the capabilities of each pano app for iOS, incl. that of Apple themselves for my (numerous) articles on pano shooting. They are NOT meant for artistic purposes and in no way meant to be as flawless as possible.

2, even DPReview state the sweep pano of iPhones are just GREAT (for what it's worth: quick shares without any kind of post processing): http://connect.dpreview.com/post/2570079115/confessions-of-iphone5s-panorama-addict . Are also the DPR folks wrong?

I give heaps of props to anyone willing to haul around a view camera, set it up properly on a tripod, and make a nicely composed shot.

The soccer moms who feel the need to carry around an iPad on vacation, stand with feet 1.5 shoulder widths apart, and impede everyone else's view with a big black slab is not even remotely in the same ballpark as what Ansel used to do.

Maybe if Ansel Adams was alive today he MIGHT be using a i Pad. I meet him one time at the Cincinnati Arts Museum viewing some of his photographs, which by the way were just stunning in real life, and he wore glasses that was as thick as Coke Bottles at the time. So hey you never know.

He was a VERY special, kind person. Few people like him in this world anymore.

Anybody against iPad shooting: sometimes one only has an iPad around and nothing else with a better camera. (Happened to me once too.) Then, you'll be more than thankful to have a decent(ly supported) camera in the iPad.

I just don't understand how you leave home with a 10" tablet but not your (far smaller/cheaper) phone... I think it's safe to assume the vast majority of people with tablets also have smartphones, I'm sure there's exceptions but they don't account for the number of dimwits we see using iPads as their camera. Grandpa using a tablet to take pic might be ok, some soccer mom or young dude just looks bad.

Will go on posting:- the new Camera interface on the iPad3 (as opposed to iPad2, where there's no Panorama support at all, timelapse doesn't seem to work and, obviously, there's no focus setting capabilities.)- the new Camera API - its improvements, whether it supports more manual settings / modes etc. (Again, it was me who published tons of articles on programming the Camera API under iOS. So rest assured: I know what I'll be talking about.)